With Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on Sunday and Valentine’s Day on Tuesday, I was thinking about the wife of the 16th president, Mary Todd Lincoln. Everyone knows so much about him, but far fewer about this controversial first lady.
Mary was no Dolly Madison or Abigail Adams. Far from it. Rather than a stand-by-your-man Southern belle, she was a first-rate firecracker. As the front page of the official website for “The Mary Todd Lincoln House” in Lexington, Kentucky, reported, “Few women in American history have endured as much controversy and tragedy.”
Mary was born into a sophisticated and wealthy political family on Dec. 13, 1818, though she later described it as “desolate.” She was the fourth of 16 children from her father and his two wives. Mary’s mother died when she was only 6 years old, shortly after which her father remarried, and she was raised by her strict stepmother.
Whitehouse.gov explained her childhood personality: “As a girlhood companion remembered her, Mary Todd was vivacious and impulsive, with an interesting personality – but ‘she now and then could not restrain a witty, sarcastic speech that cut deeper than she intended. …’ A young lawyer summed her up in 1840: ‘the very creature of excitement.'”
She was described in stature as “just 5 feet 2 inches at maturity. Mary had clear blue eyes, long lashes, light-brown hair with glints of bronze, and a lovely complexion. She danced gracefully, she loved finery, and her crisp intelligence polished the wiles of a Southern coquette.”
Mary was well-educated and versed in politics, with her family’s house hosting a variety of political guests like three-time presidential candidate Sen. Henry Clay, who lived less than 2 miles away. So, being the future wife of a prominent politician might have seemed like a shoe-in for her.
Mary met Abe at 21 years of age when she moved to Springfield, Illinois, to be near her sister. He described himself as “a poor nobody” then. They couldn’t be more opposite in background and temperament. She was 10 years younger than he was. Nevertheless, they were married three years later.
History.com explained, “They married on Nov. 4, 1842, and nine months later, their first son was born. In all, the couple had four sons, only two of whom survived into adulthood: Robert Todd Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).”
Anyone who is married understands what it is to face hard times. The Lincolns faced tumultuous times together, including the loss of two sons and leading the nation as president and first lady through its greatest crisis – the Civil War. One can only imagine how Mary, who was “born with a silver spoon” and endured few responsibilities in her upbringing, handled the anguish of watching her husband lead the country through a war that took the lives of more than 2% of the population, 620,000 souls, which would be the equivalent of 6 million people today.
Again, history.com explained, “Mary Todd Lincoln was emotional and outspoken and spent lavishly during a time when budgets were tight to fight the Civil War. Some even accused her of being a Confederate spy. This tension continued even after the Civil War came to an end in April 1865.”
The White House website further explained Mary’s personal and political dilemmas: “Southerners scorned her as a traitor to her birth, and citizens loyal to the Union suspected her of treason. When she entertained, critics accused her of unpatriotic extravagance. When, utterly distraught, she curtailed her entertaining after her son Willie’s death in 1862, they accused her of shirking her social duties.”
Tragically, on April 14, 1865, Mary sat next to her husband at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., when he was shot by an assassin, carried across the street to a bed, and then died the next day. It was too much to bear. Mary’s heart, mind and soul shattered, and she never fully recovered. She was so distraught she sought solace through mediums and spiritualism.
“She returned to Illinois and, following the death of her son Thomas (“Tad”) in 1871, fell into a deep depression. In a tell-all book about the days after the assassination, Mary Todd Lincoln’s servant, dressmaker and confidante Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley recalled “the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions” of the grieving widow and mother. Her sole surviving son, Robert, committed her to an insane asylum. She was released three months later, but never forgave him for the betrayal.”
Dr. Amy S. Greenberg, a historian at Penn State University, did a 2021 review of the exposé, “An American Marriage: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd” by Dr. Michael Burlingame, a leading expert on Abraham Lincoln and a professor of Lincoln studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Dr. Greenberg summarized Dr. Burlingame’s conclusions: “Mary Lincoln was not a great first lady. A compulsive shopper, she ran up huge debts that she tried to hide by falsifying bills and misappropriating federal funds. She accepted lavish gifts from men and then lobbied her husband for patronage appointments on their behalf. And she was emotionally unstable, with an explosive temper that was exacerbated by migraines, a debilitating menstrual condition and what was most likely bipolar disorder.
“It isn’t easy to prove that someone else’s marriage is miserable, particularly when neither of the parties will admit as much. Given how few of us fully understand the marriages of our close friends, siblings, even our parents, how is one to unlock the mystery of the Lincoln marriage? Burlingame’s approach is multifaceted. He relies heavily on written accounts by the Lincolns’ contemporaries, most of which were composed after Abraham’s death by individuals unfriendly to Mary, and on journalistic accounts published during the couple’s years in the White House. He also draws on modern psychology. Research into the mental state of abused spouses provides an explanation for why the 6-foot-4 Abraham evinced so little concern over the physical abuse he sustained at the hands of his 5-foot-2 wife (ranging from throwing hot beverages at him to a blow to his face that drew blood). At the heart of this volume is the bold claim that Abraham did not love his wife and deeply regretted his marriage.
“Mary was vain, snobbish and pretentious, that she tricked her husband into marriage and then belittled him, that she gossiped, mistreated her servants, asked houseguests to do chores, was both a spendthrift and a pinchpenny, that she didn’t like pets, had delusions of political grandeur, didn’t respond to correspondence promptly, attended séances and sold the milk of the White House cows. The guiding spirit of this volume is Herndon, the Lincoln memorialist whose hatred of Mary was loud and passionate. He wrote of her, ‘After she got married she became Soured – got gross – became material – avaricious – insolent – mean – insulting – imperious; and a she-wolf.'”
I’m no historian by any means. Whether or not Dr. Burlingame’s assessments are 100% accurate, I’ll let scholars debate. But one thing is certain: there was very little easy about the Lincolns’ marriage and love life. And I’m sure Abe was no romantic Valentino either. Yet, we know they were close enough in their early marriage to have four sons.
Indeed, even during Lincoln’s presidency, while watching her ease the hearts of guests about the divided nation during a White House reception, he praised her: “My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I … fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out.”
Mrs. Lincoln spent her later years traveling through Europe with her one surviving son, Robert, while she suffered from declining health and looked for any remedy. She died at the age of 63 on July 16, 1882, back at her sister’s home in Illinois – the same house from which she had walked as the bride of Abraham Lincoln, 40 years before.
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